


Gravity

by orphan_account



Category: Life Is Strange (Video Game)
Genre: Ambiguous Relationships, Angst, F/F, suicidal undertones
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-05
Updated: 2016-04-05
Packaged: 2018-05-31 09:47:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,310
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6465544
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Rachel tells her to fall, Victoria actually laughs. </p><p>She fell a long time ago.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Gravity

**Author's Note:**

> I am filled with so many feelings. 
> 
> So. Many.  
> Seriously, here have some, I have too many.
> 
> This is the result of repeated playthroughs of this awesome game, [Love is Strange](http://loveisstrange-vn.tumblr.com/post/142225279825/lisvn-v12), a visual novel. It's based off Life is Strange, it's fan made, it's free, and it's beautiful, so please if you've played it or are planning to play it, don't forget to drop [the team](http://loveisstrange-vn.tumblr.com/team) a heartfelt thank you! 
> 
> Anyway, here you go.

 

When Victoria first sees Rachel Amber, there are leaves. Brown, dry, delicate, cracking with veins spread over their rustic surface like spider webs.

The leaves crunch under Victoria's feet, one lands on her shoulder but she doesn't notice. Rachel Amber is dragging her suitcase across the courtyard, face turned away from afternoon sunbeams, silhouettes playing in the slopes of her face, and Victoria doesn't notice the leaf.

She doesn't know Rachel's name first, of course. Courtney tells her when she asks, followed by an airy _why_. Victoria doesn't really have an answer for that so she just narrows her eyes until Courtney absorbs enough sense to close her mouth.

Rachel takes the steps to the dormitories one at a time. Lugs her suitcase with her carefully all the way, face lax with passive intent. She's wearing fishnet stockings under her shorts. A small tear is on one thigh. When Victoria asks herself why she even noticed this detail, she doesn't have an answer for that either.

Rachel disappears into the dormitory building without noticing Victoria, and to Victoria this is just fine. 

* * *

 

Victoria sees Rachel again in a few days at Photography class. She's ditched the fishnets but the jeans she's wearing are ripped, tattered at the knees with fabric webs hanging like tragic curtains after a storm. Those tears are deliberate. Victoria's pretty sure the ones around the ankles aren't.

(Details.)

They don't talk, but Rachel glances in Victoria's direction once and Victoria puts more effort with keeping her chin up while she walks. Rachel's eyes feel like smoldering coals on her arms, her shoulders, her back, hairs risen underneath the smooth cashmere. Victoria picks the table farthest from Rachel.

(Questions, no answers.)

It doesn't matter though, because as soon as class starts, Rachel ambles with purpose, eyes innocuously elsewhere while she takes the seat closest to Victoria. Courtney is muttering about the teacher, about Mark Jefferson, and Victoria really should be paying attention but her hairs are rising all over again and she doesn't have an answer as to why.

"Hi," Rachel says, harmless enough. Friendly enough. Victoria turns her head an inch to stare, stone-faced, a glorious monolith. She doesn't answer. It should intimidate anyone enough, but Rachel stares back and just smiles. A curl of her lips in slow motion. Cheeks lifting, the slightest hint of white teeth peeking under her lips.

She drops her pencil some time during the discussion and it rolls close to the Victoria's feet. Victoria keeps her face forward. Rachel stands, crouches to retrieve her pencil and Victoria breathes.

Lavender.

Details. 

* * *

 

Rachel is everywhere at Blackwell. In the mouths of the jocks, talking about how gorgeous she is. In the laughter of the losers, the skater clique, giddy with how cool she is. In the faces of the students that smile at the mere mention of her name, in the glimmer of their eyes over some stupid crush that is so obvious it is _nauseating_.

She's in Mark Jefferson's praises, all smiles and hearty acknowledgements of her poise, her grace, her power when faced with a camera.

She's in Victoria's body, curled cinder blocks in her guts and barbed wires around her chest.

Rachel is ahead of Victoria, always in first place.

Victoria hates Rachel with potent venom. Spews it out every waking moment, whether Rachel's within earshot or not.

"She's a total fake. Tell me you've noticed how old her clothes look. They're like fucking rags."

Rachel doesn't even turn to look at her. It's like hurling rocks at a hundred foot tall idol of a goddess.

No one even turns to look at Victoria.

Class starts, and Rachel takes a seat. The one closest to Victoria again. It's always there, with her bag perched by her own feet and notes spread over the desk, pens scattered, always prone to falling off. When she's set, she looks at Victoria and smiles.

"Hi."

Knots tangle in Victoria's throat. It's always like that.

She doesn't say anything. Even as Mr. Jefferson starts the lecture with a gracious bout of praise toward Rachel, she doesn't say anything. Just crosses her legs, hands clamped tight enough on the table's edges her palms hurt.

(Always like that.)

* * *

 

The Vortex Club throws a party and Nathan invites Rachel. Supervises her entrance personally, flashes smile after smile her way and handing her drinks like _what the fuck is this even_. Rachel's presence in the party is like divine grace, like something ethereal, otherworldly, just dropped in the middle of it and everyone feels it.

They all flock to her. The music sounds louder, livelier. Even the lights look brighter. Catching on her face, her hair, her dark nail polish.

The cinder blocks in Victoria's guts weigh so heavily she can't stand. Barbed wires coiled around her chest so tight she can't breathe.

(Go away.)

Nathan offers to introduce her and she says no. Harshly enough that he gapes, takes a step back with palms up for defense. Victoria almost wants him to be sorry, _yes_ , to be _so sorry_ that he makes Rachel leave but he doesn't. Nathan glares, and Victoria's ribs constrict so bad she's convinced she'll bleed.

"Fine, be a bitch, Vic," he says, flails his hands because he has nothing to do with them. He can't exactly hit her, can he. "I don't even know what's wrong with you. You wanna sit here all night, then be my guest."

Nathan leaves. Victoria doesn't sit there all night, contrary to what he says. She drags concrete and iron out with her and wanders away. 

* * *

 

The next party is the same. The weight in her solar plexus and the stricture in her chest tell Victoria it's time to go.

Hayden and Courtney don't even see her leave. She wonders vaguely if Nathan will be looking, if he'll be thinking of trying to introduce her to Rachel _fucking_ Amber again. The heaviness in her insides persists, warns her as much as the pain in her chest does, so she wills the thoughts away with a lighter and cigarette between her lips. The music from the gym is a dull throb of beats here on the dormitories' rooftop.

The night is cold. Victoria's teeth chatter, eyebrows wrenched over the bridge of her nose. The toes of her suedes peek off the rooftop ledge. She bends minutely, looks at the ground below. Grass, dirt, some shrubs Samuel has yet to trim. She bends further.

Blood on the grass. Skull on the dirt. Blonde hair spilled over the shrubs.

Smoke is coming up in thin clouds at her side. She blinks amidst the gray tendrils, wrinkles her nose, grits her teeth.

The rooftop door opens behind her. She whirls, slow, careful, wills her body steady against the strength of the wind and the force of gravity. Rachel looks at her from the doorway and for a moment, gravity feels like the closest friend Victoria will ever have.

They stare at each other. Rachel isn't looking at Victoria's fingers, pinched around a lit cigarette, or Victoria's feet, settled precariously on the ledge. Just Victoria's face. Intent: searching, almost. Eyes like liquid gold making Victoria's hairs rise, weights heavy, wires tighten. Victoria blinks and Rachel is smiling.

"Hi."

(Always like that.)

The poison bubbles, leaks, froths in Victoria's tongue like water in a hundred degrees. " _What?_ " she snaps. Aside from a brief twitch in her lips, Rachel reacts little else.

"I just," Rachel ventures eventually, sweeps an arm in gesture to the roof, eyes never leaving Victoria. An intruder calming a wild animal in its territory. "Wanted to hang here. Look at the stars a little." A cursory glance to Victoria's hand. "Maybe smoke some, too."

Victoria says nothing, and in hindsight, she probably should have, because Rachel comes walking over. From where she chooses to stand, an arms length or two away, Victoria can't properly see what she's doing with her hands.

Victoria wonders briefly if the distance is for safety. If it's to prevent the very close possibility of her clawing Rachel's eyes out, or throwing Rachel back out the door and telling her to go away.

(Go away.)

Rachel pulls a pack of cigarettes from her jacket, picks one out to slip into her mouth. She lights it and, just like she said, she tilts her head up and looks at the stars. Victoria throws away the image of how Rachel's face looks like in the moonlight like she throws away her snubbed cigarette when she leaves. 

* * *

 

The class erupts in applause as Mr. Jefferson hands Rachel her photo, gushes with praises, acknowledgements, such flattering kindness that Rachel's eyes light. Two suns coming up in the sky of her face. Hayden is being very expressive of his congratulations and Victoria just sits, stiff, face forced forward. Rachel goes back to her seat. Where she always sits.

Lavender.

Concrete. Iron.

She didn't say hi to Victoria today. A break from the routine, a flaw on the _always_ that they've been weaving since the beginning of the school year. She doesn't even drop her pencil, and Victoria has to think about whether or not she's been doing it on purpose all this time.

(Questions.)

The class ends and Courtney is already blabbering, helping Victoria with her books, the tablet, the Manila folder with the overdue papers written by Courtney herself for Victoria's AP Science. Courtney talks, talks, _talks_. Stops suddenly, and Victoria pauses to raise an eyebrow, opens her mouth ( _"Are you so fucking incompetent that you forgot what you were gonna say?"_ ) Flinches and turns instead when someone taps her on the shoulder.

Light, quick. As if it was done with just fingertips: as if fingertips were all that were needed. Rachel smiles at her, hovering at a safe distance. She's wearing a boat neck, one side of the collar askew.

(Details.)

"Hi," she starts, hand raised in a limp wave. The same hand that tapped Victoria on the shoulder, probably. "Vortex party tonight, right? I'll see you then."

She's walking away before Victoria could answer. Courtney sputters a baffled inquiry, shot down halfway quickly by a guttural grunt and a solid glare.

Victoria's body is heavy, her chest is tight.

Her shoulder is warm for the rest of the day. 

* * *

 

It doesn't matter that she skips the party entirely. When she comes up to the roof at sundown, the dormitories empty and the gymnasium loud, Rachel is already there. Standing in the same spot she stood on the first time. Head tilted up the same way to look at the stars.

Victoria walks to the ledge, legs forced by pride that will not be wounded. This is her place. This is her roof. She was here first.

Pride takes her there, cinder blocks and barbed wires root her in place. She doesn't even remember to light a cigarette until Rachel's smoke clouds drift close to her face.

"So what keeps you coming back here?" Rachel asks suddenly, voice even. Sugary, as always, like when Victoria hears her talking to people in the halls or laughing with a friend over the phone in the dorms.

Smoke clouds. Winds whistling. Victoria doesn't answer. Rachel pushes on in spite of it. "Like, I get security gets pretty loose when there's a Vortex party because Nate makes sure of it," _Nate_ , like they're close friends, like they're _best_ friends, "and it makes it safe to smoke around here then, but -"

"We're not friends," Victoria snaps. Loud but not whole, voice tapering off near the end. She swallows, scowls at nothing in particular to cover up. The cigarette trembles with the shake of her fingers.

The trees are swooning with the wind, cold, almost freezing with the changing season. "I know we're not," Rachel answers slowly. Careful, but sure. No signs of being offended at all, not intimidated. Not angry, even. Victoria bites her cheek until she tastes rust. She takes a deep drag.

"Is it being alone?" Rachel treads. Lightly: light footing on cracked ice. Victoria feels knots, tangled somethings in her throat. When she swallows, rocks drop to her stomach.

She answers, and in hindsight, she probably shouldn't have. "Mostly."

Rachel doesn't say anything. They finish one, two, three, four smokes before Rachel leaves. Thuds of boots that follow her out of the roof, down the steps to the dorms proper.

Victoria thinks of the tatter of Rachel's flannel, the scent of lavender mixing with the stench of cigarettes.

(Weights. Wires. Alone.

Gravity.) 

* * *

 

"Do you look at the stars at all, Victoria? Do you think of them?"

Up on the roof, the wind is harsher. The seasons on the move. They're both sitting now, feet planted on the ground, backs turned away from the courtyard.

(Away from taunting gravity.)

Victoria keeps her mouth closed. It's either Rachel sees a twitch on Victoria's face, or she senses, _senses_ , the incredulity like it's coming off Victoria in near tangible waves because she adds, "not like, in the scientific way. Gases and supernovas or whatever. More like..." A pause. It has Victoria turning her head a little to watch. Rachel is looking up, chin divine in the moonlight. "The metaphysical sense. Do you look at the stars and just think about destiny? Lives written on the sky?"

"What are you smoking?" Victoria asks, and Rachel's laughter catches her off guard. Birds in flight come to mind. A flock passing the view of the sun, their shadows fleeting on the grass.

Rachel sniffs. Laughs a little more, manages, "just. _Fate_ , you know. Life paths on the stars. Constellations we can't see, not with these eyes, maybe. Dreams that won't come true, dreams that will."

"Dreams?"

"Yeah." Rachel blinks, glances down, looks at Victoria with parted lips. Says, "dreams. You have some, don't you?"

All at once it happens. The concrete drops and settles. The barbed wires tighten, prongs sinking deep into Victoria's chest. Gravity pulls. Like Rachel is seeing it all, her eyes harden. She purses her lips. Victoria parts hers.

"The hell you care about my dreams for?" she bites out. Rachel is a good distance away: Rachel is fucking smart for that. "We're not friends. I told you that right? Stop acting like we are."

"I was just -"

"You're doing a better job at making my dreams come true than I am."

The admission slips with fury. Envy so obvious Victoria doesn't give herself the time to stew in her panic. She stands, crushes her cigarette with a shoe. Rachel grabs her wrist but she pulls away and pushes through the rooftop door.

Rachel shouts her name. Victoria's ears ring. She doesn't look back. 

* * *

 

Rachel doesn't say hi in Photography class. Doesn't sit close to Victoria, doesn't even look in her direction, and Victoria tells herself good. Tells herself it's better this way. This is what she wants.

Go away.

Mr. Jefferson's lecture goes into one ear, down her hand, written into her notebook, and flies right out the other ear. She jots notes to keep her head from turning. A futile distraction at most from the unset crawling its way from her chest to every bone, every nerve ending in her body.

Someone whispers to her right and she looks sharply, tries to listen. Tries to pick up even the smallest mention of _dreams_ or the fucking sin of _envy_. Rachel's eyes glow in her periphery.

The class ends. Victoria stuffs her things into her bag with a distinct lack of grace that Courtney just watches with raised eyebrows. Victoria leaves the room, saunters down the hall. _Gasps_ , tumbles when someone grabs her by the forearm and pulls.

Whispering. Some students watch them go. Victoria finds some semblance of composure and stops abruptly, pulling back when Rachel pulls forward. Rachel looks at her, face stern.

"Come on," is all she says, and Victoria can fight it all she wants but her forearm is already hot. Rachel leads them out of Blackwell, past the fountain, down the street and at a bus stop.

"Let me go," Victoria snaps.

"And you'll follow?"

Rachel's face is lax, loose now around the jaws. When Victoria looks at her eyes, they're firm. Solidified gold. Like she won't - has never taken, will never - take _no_ for an answer.

Victoria doesn't say anything, but when a bus pulls up and Rachel climbs on, she follows. Rachel doesn't even check to see if Victoria's following. Like she already knows Victoria is.

They don't sit next to each other. The bus takes them past buildings, down streets, until the people on the sidewalk thin and buildings become a clear sky and docks. A shore, the sea.

They get off together at least, walk the rest of the way to the beach. The sun has set by now. Victoria's cold in her cardigan, but Rachel looks fine enough in thin plaid.

"Tell me your dreams," Rachel says, boots on the sand, eyes to the sky. The hazels shimmer like they're swallowing up the moonlight.

"Why do I -"

"Tell me," and this time, Rachel is looking at Victoria. Victoria's chest tightens. The waters crash against the sand, distant slaps in the night.

"I want to be a great photographer," she says. Rachel is staring at her and it's like every thought is going from her brain to her mouth without her permission. "Famous. Magazines lining up to have me. Galleries gushing over my work. Models begging to be photographed. Books about my career."

The wind is rushing but Victoria doubts it's because of the cold that she trembles this time. She breathes, shaky puffs, visible clouds in the cold. When she blinks, her eyes sting.

Rachel must think it's enough because she moves after a while. Turns away from the shore, moonlight eclipsing half of her face, shadows on the other. She takes Victoria's hand. Smiles. Relieved? Satisfied?

She squeezes before she pulls. 

* * *

 

When Rachel asks Victoria to come to a Vortex party together, Victoria has learned to say yes so quickly it tilts the world sideways for her for a couple of seconds. Rachel is always pleased though, always happy when she says yes. She smiles at Victoria. The world tilts upright again.

The beer warms everyone enough that they stop shivering in their jackets after the first hour. They start a bonfire in the sand, flames licking, whipping and fighting against the shore winds. The music should be enough to call the attention of authorities but of course no one comes.

Nathan disappeared after Rachel did, and Victoria is huddled alone on the sand, leaned on a rock, half finished beer can at her feet and stick in one hand. She draws a shape on the sand. Stars, she thinks. Or a meteor shower. Dreams. Fate. Lives. She stops to fire Rachel a text and ask where she is.

It doesn't surprise her at this point when Rachel doesn't reply. Rachel Amber always has something going on, always has places to be, people to talk to. She fires a second just for the hell of it and even that is ignored.

" _I'm leaving,_ " Victoria types, sends, jaw taut to keep her teeth from chattering. Flecks of sand fly, cling to her suedes as she walks away from the shore and into the beach parking space. Her phone vibrates twice and she has to bite on her cheek hard to keep from checking.

A lit RV is parked near where her car is and its door swings open, light from inside spilling, drawing jagged whites on the pavement. Rachel hops out. Victoria keeps her head turned away, determinedly unlocks her car.

"Victoria."

Instinct tells her to turn, to acknowledge Rachel's voice. Instinct needs to shut the fuck up.

" _Victoria_. Victoria, I'm sorry -"

Rachel grabs her shoulder. Victoria jerks away. "Get the fuck away from me."

She turns, despite her better judgment. Rachel's face is inscrutable. Eyes wide, pupils blown enough that the hazels almost aren't there. Frank Bowers is lingering at the RV's open door and Victoria feels so much. _Angrier_ all of a sudden.

"Let's go back to the party," Rachel tries, voice low. A command, if there ever was one. Victoria glares.

"Fuck off."

She opens the door and clambers in. The engine groans to life, the heaters go up. The passenger door opens and she stiffens, frowns, keeps her head down when Rachel climbs in and shuts the door.

"Get out."

"If you're not coming back to the party, then let's just leave together."

Victoria swallows. "Get. Out."

"No."

The only time Rachel accepts that word into her vocabulary is when she's the one saying it. Neither of them move. A heartbeat longer and Victoria turns on the radio, volume cranked way up with purpose. Rachel's stare burns the side of her face. Victoria drives.

"This is really unnecessary," Rachel says at length. Arcadia Bay passes the windows in shadows, a dead town with flickering streetlights, devoid of life at barely 10pm.

"Then get out," Victoria says. Almost hits the brakes, but Rachel answers without missing a beat.

"How you're trying to get away from me, I mean. It's unnecessary."

This time, Victoria does hit the breaks. The car jerks, seatbelts keeping them both upright. Victoria turns and Rachel is already smiling.

It happens. It happens while Victoria sits there frozen, thinking of the secrets in Rachel's smile and the certainty in the crinkles of her eyes. It happens and Victoria understands what Rachel means by unnecessary.

Rachel kisses her and the world tilts, Victoria unable to keep steady on the shifting floors of the earth. Rachel touches her neck, her cheek, turning blood into electricity and Victoria is almost _embarrassed_ by how she sinks so easily.

There's no concrete, or wires, but something drops in her stomach and promptly explodes. Wings, tiny fluttery things. Rachel feels like romantic poetry does when it's rolling out of your mouth. Tastes like all the colors of the universe given flavor.

When Rachel pulls away, Victoria chases her with desperate urgency. Victoria can almost feel the word building in Rachel's mouth:

Unnecessary. 

* * *

 

Nathan doesn't know. He trails after Rachel like a dog, showers her with affection and all the beautiful words in the world, and he doesn't know. It sometimes baffles Victoria how Rachel can give him attention that seems so innocently undivided when she's throwing Victoria looks over his shoulder all the while.

Everyone doesn't know. They don't know that Victoria thinks the rooftop holy for the times Rachel comes up to it to meet her, they don't know that Rachel tells her the sweetest things, the _craziest_ things about heavenly bodies when she's on weed or LSD.

They don't know that Victoria has Rachel's mouth on her tongue, has Rachel's flavor burned into her taste buds that it's hard not to taste Rachel when she swallows.

Mr. Jefferson still sings Rachel praises in class, and Victoria realizes maybe even _after_ class, when she stays a little longer and she sees Rachel perched at his desk. Running fingers over his forearm, giving him that one smile that always makes Victoria think of secrets. Mysteries. Mischief. Games.

Victoria wonders just how much of this is a game. How much of this has Rachel planned out, a play by play in her head that she flies through effortlessly everyday.

She decides, anger in her chest and thorns in her heart, that maybe Nathan should know. Maybe everyone should know.

She scrawls it on the walls. The fountain. In the bathroom, make-up running and sinuses clicking frantically.

_Rachel Amber is a whore._

And she's angry ( _hurt, jealous, afraid_ ) but it's _unnecessary_ , because Rachel texts her and Victoria comes. Make-up fixed, lips curled up, warmth in her chest. They go wherever Rachel wants. 

* * *

 

When Rachel tells Victoria to fall, it's because they're pressed together, clinging, lips wet and pupils blown, the back of Victoria's knee against the bed frame but she's keeping them upright.

Rachel's eyes are hooded, lips curled in a smile that screams expectant. Screams secrets, screams mischief, screams at Victoria that delaying it is so incredibly unnecessary. Rachel's jeans are torn, the same pair she wore on the first day of Photography class. Victoria can't help but notice a new tear on one thigh.

Details.

Rachel turns her face, one cheek away from the afternoon sun coming in through Victoria's window. Victoria is reminded of last autumn, of the mess in the courtyard and Rachel lugging her suitcase toward the dorms. Of the leaves, falling around Rachel, around Victoria, and Victoria wonders if she fell at that moment like the leaves fell that day. Gravity.

The moment of pause doesn't last. Rachel gives the order to fall again, and Victoria actually laughs as they topple on the bed.

She fell a long time ago. 

* * *

 

"You said career," Rachel starts, smoke spilling with the words. Wind whisks the cigarette clouds away. It's warmer these days. "Not life. You said, books about _my career_. Why is that?"

Victoria flicks ash, scatters gray flecks on her suedes. The wind rustles the trees and the fabric of her sweater. She swallows, says, "what's the difference?"

"It's a big difference. All the famous people have biographies. Books about them that start from childhood to the fame. You just want a book on your fame."

The silence stretches but Rachel doesn't mind. She's patient, knows it'll come and she's just waiting. Looking at Victoria with her eyes like the stars above them and a face that's calm, cigarette dangling from her lips, distance between them near nonexistent. The smallest movement and their knees will bump. Victoria closes the distance.

"No one wants to hear about my childhood," she says, but Rachel keeps watching, keeps listening like _she does_ , _yes_ she _does_ want to hear, so Victoria tells her.

It doesn't come easy. She starts with her mother, a spectacle of beauty with a face she gave Victoria, living off of wine, champagne, whisky, like they're what's running through her veins. Continues with her father, cold and distant, with a temper he passed to her, knuckles made calloused with the frequency of which he drives them through walls or kisses her mother's face with.

The house. The mansion at Capitol Hill that is every little girl's dream house, tall, grand, beautiful. The emptiness, just chandeliers and exquisite furniture. The maids that never ran out of kind reasons as to where her parents went off to, when they're coming back.

Birthdays spent alone. Holidays with strangers. The dissatisfaction in her mother's eyes with each look, the disappointment in her father's face with each photo she shows.

At one point, the lump in her throat has gotten so big she starts to cry. Rachel holds her. A shield from a storm, blankets in the cold. She smells like lavender. Always lavender.

Always like that. Just details. 

* * *

 

Rachel never hesitates to take everything off, but Victoria has come to notice the one thing she doesn't remove is the feather earring. She could undress in front of Victoria a hundred times and Victoria will probably never get to see her taking that earring off.

Victoria asks her one time, the two of them cooling down on her bed, "what's with that? The feather earring," and she's asking because not only does Rachel never take it off, but also because it's only one. Rachel's other ear is pierced, but no feather. No pair.

Rachel must find this question funny because she grins. "What about it?"

"You never take it off. And it's just one. Doesn't it have a pair?"

There's that smile again. Secrets. Mischief. Floors of the ocean unexplored, mysterious. "It did," Rachel says. "But I just think it looks better alone. Don't you think so? I feel like it'd be awkward having two feathers dangling on my ears all the time."

"Then, where's the other one?"

That gets Rachel's eyes crinkling. "I don't know. I must've lost it somewhere," and that's it. She changes the subject seamlessly. "But hey, so have you been looking at the stars? Have you been thinking about them?"

"Stars? Like, what, fate?"

"Yeah. Dreams, you know."

Victoria hums, "maybe," rolls to her side, props her head up with a hand. "You never really told me your dreams, though."

Rachel blinks, seems to think about it for a moment. "I want to be a model. A big deal kind of model. Take the world by storm kind of thing."

"And you'll start with Arcadia Bay?"

"You kidding?" Rachel snorts. "I'm starting with LA. All the good modeling agencies are there. I've been saving up, you know."

Victoria swallows. Rachel Amber leaving. She'd be lying if she said the thought didn't cross her mind at least once. Rachel's big, too big for Arcadia Bay. She asks, "you think that's written in the stars, then? Your being a big shot model and taking the world by storm?"

A moment of oddity. A solemn look passes over Rachel's face and Victoria has never seen that before, that she pulls closer to see better.

"Maybe," Rachel starts, and it's strange, because _maybe_ has never been part of her vocabulary. Almost like no isn't. " _Maybe_ I'll make it big as a model. _Maybe_ I'll blast through my dreams. I don't know."

"You might," Victoria murmurs.

"I might not," Rachel says, small, soft. Resigned, almost. Like she's accepting something, she knows what's coming. Like she has the eyes that can read fates and she's seen hers. Unset curls in the deepest recesses of Victoria's guts.

(Weights. Wires.)

But she's smiling, and Victoria has to think about how much about Rachel does she really know. How much of this is a game, how much of Rachel is a girl playing the game.

Victoria thinks, as Rachel kisses her, how much of Rachel she would like to know about.

(All of her.) 

* * *

 

Rachel Amber is everywhere at Blackwell. In the mouths of the jocks, talking about how perfect she was. In the whispers of the losers, the skater clique, somber with how they miss her. In the faces of the students that fall at the mere mention of her name, in the sadness of their eyes over how much they're worried.

She's in Mark Jefferson's words, the solemn way he talks of where she's possibly gone.

She's in the hateful graffiti around Blackwell. In the missing person posters someone has been putting up for days. In Nathan's rambling, the tremors of his voice and fingers as he pulls his hair.

She's in Victoria's body, mountains of cinder blocks in her guts and thick barbed wires around her chest. Piled so heavy, wrapped so tight Victoria thinks she'll bleed.

And she does bleed, fists balled tight at her sides, nails biting into her palms, leaving scarlet marks. Lip clamped between her teeth hard enough that she licks up rust.

Rachel's in gravity, the reason Victoria doesn't wander up to the rooftop anymore.

(Blood on the grass. Skull on the dirt. Blonde hair spilled over the shrubs.)

Rachel was never meant for Arcadia Bay. Never meant for Victoria, and Victoria isn't sure who she hates more. Rachel, for playing the game, for being so good at the game. Or herself for being played, for losing, for being so bad at it.

Victoria tears the missing person posters down because Rachel isn't fucking _missing_. She _left_ , she's _gone_ , she's _in LA_. She left everything behind. She left Victoria behind.

And Victoria is angry. Angry enough that she defaces the posters, crosses Rachel's face out with red markers and writes _bitch_ in big angry letters. Rachel Amber the heartless bitch.

But it's unnecessary, because Victoria still cries. Still holds onto what little Rachel left behind, the weights and the wires and taunting gravity. So heavy, so tight, so strong Victoria can't breathe.

Rachel Amber is gone.

_Rachel Amber is a bitch._

**Author's Note:**

> ~~I just want Rachel out of my system.~~
> 
>  
> 
> Thanks for reading! 
> 
> *Revamped this, because this is my favorite Victoria-centric work for reasons. :')


End file.
